JOHN SCHIFF, A PHILANTHROPIST AND INVESTMENT BANKER, DIES

By WILLIAM G. BLAIR

Published: May 10, 1987

John M. Schiff, investment banker, philanthropist and last of the senior partners of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, with which his family had been associated for more than a century, died yesterday at his home in Oyster Bay, L.I. He was 82 years old and also had an apartment in Manhattan and a home on the island of Jamaica.

Mr. Schiff's active banking career, which began in 1927, was almost entirely spent with Kuhn Loeb and ended only with the merger in 1977 of Kuhn Loeb with Lehman Brothers, another prestigious old-line Wall Street firm.

Mr. Schiff was named honorary chairman of the merged firm, Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and then served, until his death, as an advisory director of the firm that succeeded it in 1984, Shearson Lehman Brothers. That merger marked the end of 117 years of the Kuhn Loeb name in the banking business. Avid Horseman

In addition to banking, Mr. Schiff followed in the family tradition by serving on the boards of many corporations and charitable, academic and civic institutions.

He also was an avid horseman, before World War II as a fox hunter and polo player and afterward as a breeder of thoroughbreds in Kentucky and Florida and owner of a racing stable at Belmont Park. His racing silks were purple and white.

Mr. Schiff, whose surviving sister, Dorothy Schiff, is the former owner and publisher of The New York Post, was the third generation of his family to play a leading role in the destiny of Kuhn Loeb.

According to Stephen Birmingham's account in ''Our Crowd, the Great Jewish Families of New York,'' Mr. Schiff's grandfather, Jacob H. Schiff, came to this country from Germany in 1873, at the age of 26. Attains Partnership in 1875

As a son-in-law of Solomon Loeb, a founder of the firm that started out as a dry-goods business in Cincinnati before moving to New York in 1867, Jacob Schiff was admitted to a partnership in 1875. He quickly raised the firm to a position of eminence.

Jacob Schiff's partnership was passed on to his son, Mortimer L. Schiff, and from him to his and the former Adele Neustadt's only son, John Mortimer Schiff, who was born Aug. 26, 1904 in Roslyn, L.I.

Mr. Schiff graduated from the Taft School in 1921, from Yale University in 1925 and from New College at Oxford University in 1927. He began his banking career that year with the Bankers Trust Company in New York. After briefly working for the Missouri Pacific Railway Company in St. Louis, Mr. Schiff joined the family firm in 1929.

He became a partner in 1931 and a senior partner in 1946, after serving in the Navy during World War II. Mr. Schiff rose to the rank of commander and took part in the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Boy Scouts President

When Lillian D. Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, stepped down as president in 1937, Mr. Schiff succeeded her. When the settlement's visiting nurse program, founded by Jacob Schiff, separated from the settlement a few years later, Mr. Schiff went with it. He was the first president and chairman of the renamed Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

Mr. Schiff was married in 1934 to Edith Brevoort Baker, who died in 1975. The next year, Mr. Schiff married Josephine Laimbeer Fell, widow of John R. Fell, who had been a partner in Lehman Brothers.

Besides his sister and his wife, Mr. Schiff is survived by two sons, David T., of Manhattan, and Peter G., of Oyster Bay, L.I.; a stepson, John R. Fell Jr. of Locust Valley, L.I.; a stepdaughter, Natalie Fell Spencer of Middlebury, Vt., six grandchildren and seven stepgrandchildren.

A funeral service is to be held at 10 A.M. Tuesday at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue and 65th Street.